I'm glad the shuttle program is going back online but with the price of launching a Soyuz being about 1/25th the cost of a shuttle launch, I'm not sure how much we should depend on the shuttle.
"Microsoft, the world's largest software company is seeking all manner of Patent Attorneys with Freakin' Lasers on Their Heads to assist with plans of world domination."
The American Civil Liberties Union likened the new rules to a "de facto national ID card," saying that the measure would force "states to deny driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants" and make DMV employees act as agents of the federal immigration service.
Just so we're clear, it appears in the debate about whether illegal immigrant should be granted access to all services that the U.S. has to offer, it would appear the ACLU is firmly in the PRO column.
I agree with your point, and further submit it doesn't negate mine.
The point is: You do pay for everything. Once one realizes that, it should be more difficult to subscribe to the belief that companies are a fountain of money that magically bubbles up from the ground. If someone shoplifts in a store, the real customers of that store pay for that person's stealing. If someone commits insurance fraud, the honest customers of the insurance company pay for that fraud. If an attorney wins a $10 billion judgement against a company, the company either goes out of business or raises their prices to compensate.
The intellectual dishonest that attorneys sometimes engage in is that they "make companies pay for their mistakes", presumably with the hope they won't happen again. When it's insurance companies that pay the judgement and regular people that pay for any insurance premium increases, citing this as a deterrent to negligent behavior is unfortunately just not true.
This type of thing makes me a little sick. If you follow the money trail, you'll see that this type of thing only serves to hurt people and society and enrich lawyers at the same time.
1. Companies buy insurance from insurance companies
2. Regular people buy products from company
3. Some people get hurt by company's product
4. Lawyers sue company on behalf of hurt plaintiffs
5. Lawyers win case for plaintiff, Company's insurance company pays $10 gazillion
6. Lawyers for plaintiff take 60% of $10 gazillion
7. Company's insurance rates are raised
8. Company raises prices
9. Regular people pay higher prices to company
So, who pays for such litigation and $100-per-click AdWords? You do.
No, I certainly wouldn't have meant anything quite so inflamatory (no pun intended). What I meant is that we shouldn't exercise any knee-jerk reactions in our diplomatic attempts. We should recognize what this "admission" is; an attempt to get the upper hand in negotiations and to use the threat of WMD to get what you want. Do we want to encourage future states to do the same thing?
Until the U.S. adopts a "loser pays" court system similar to the UK, these types of exploratory frivolous lawsuits will continue.
Imagine if on the other hand SCO had to pay for IBMs entire legal defense to their frivolous lawsuit after they lost. This lawsuit never would have seen the light of day.
In my opinion, one of China's greatest assets is its lack of current infrastructure. Imagine being able to design roads, dams, bridges, electricity generating plants, etc with 2005 technology without having to support an existing infrastructure.
With home users, you can have 1,000 customers and make yourself wealthy. You will also be serving 1,000 tyrants with 1,000 problems who if they write you a check for a nickel will think you owe them your first born.
With mid-size companies, you can have 100 customers and make yourself wealthy. You will also be serving 100 tyrants with 100 problems who if they write you a check for $100 will think you owe them your first born.
With large-size companies, you can have 5 customers and make yourself wealthy. You will also be serving 5 people who don't give a rats ass what you do or don't do for them and who if they write you a check for $100,000 will think it's OK if you don't return their call for a few weeks.
This is a slight exaggeration but the basic tenet is true. Don't focus on small fish or you'll be sorry.
Re:If you could install it
on
iPod Shuffle RAID
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I tried this a number of years ago. In fact, there's an CF->IDE interface board that is very inexpensive that I purchased. Turned out that CF was much slower than my hard drive.
Might be interesting to try it again with today's professional flash memory, but with readily available CF memory from about 3 years ago, I was able to install a Windows OS on it but it was slower than my hard drive.
If you really want something like this, there are memory drives that use actual battery-backed up RAM (take your pick of varities) that are as you would expect lightning quick. Last I checked though Bitmicro's Site, they were very expensive.
The first 10% share of the browser market is easy. To get any more than that will be very difficult. Difficulty further enhanced by actions Microsoft may take.
The comments of "Wow! That's hilariously dumb" are starting to come in already. Dell is not stupid. Keep an open mind to the fact that something that is counter-intuitive might still be the best way to do something.
In this case, Dell is taking advantage of an inefficiency in the marketplace. Specifically that customers are honestly identifying themselves and they're offering the highest price they feel that particular type of customer will pay. Of course, this starts to break down when customer knowledge makes the marketplace more efficient, but the average person is not a Slashdot denizen or FatWallet (or similar site) checker.
The Economist is a weekly magazine with hundreds of pages of world news. I had a subscription for a couple years before I realized I just could not keep up reading it. Before I stopped subscribing I even tried skipping over those things that held little interest for me. I found it far better to let other people find the interesting things (like this article) and have them eventually posted on Slashdot where I could then read them.
It's a very interesting magazine though if you can find the time to commit to it.
NPR had a recent story on podcasting. They interviewed a guy that would record his commute to work every day and then put it on a web site so that people could then listen to his musings on their IPods. Scintillating.
Higher Ebay Costs = Higher Ebay Fees
on
eBay Begins A Change
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Before you get all excited about having EBay offering all this great customer service, realize that it comes at a cost. A cost that will be passed on to you - the people that use EBay, both buyers and sellers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad the shuttle program is going back online but with the price of launching a Soyuz being about 1/25th the cost of a shuttle launch, I'm not sure how much we should depend on the shuttle.
"Microsoft, the world's largest software company is seeking all manner of Patent Attorneys with Freakin' Lasers on Their Heads to assist with plans of world domination."
Animated pictures of shiny pocketwatches moving back and forth were found to be the most effective at taking control of other people's computers.
If you can just manage to say something that gets picked up by major news organizations, then it might make it come true.
Or at the very least, you might at least fool some people enough to continue to give you money.
Didn't this just happen? How in the world did they get a $1 million judgement against LokiTorrent already!?
Is it just me or do the wheels of injustice move far swifter than the wheels of justice?
I found their quote interesting:
The American Civil Liberties Union likened the new rules to a "de facto national ID card," saying that the measure would force "states to deny driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants" and make DMV employees act as agents of the federal immigration service.
Just so we're clear, it appears in the debate about whether illegal immigrant should be granted access to all services that the U.S. has to offer, it would appear the ACLU is firmly in the PRO column.
I agree with your point, and further submit it doesn't negate mine.
The point is: You do pay for everything. Once one realizes that, it should be more difficult to subscribe to the belief that companies are a fountain of money that magically bubbles up from the ground. If someone shoplifts in a store, the real customers of that store pay for that person's stealing. If someone commits insurance fraud, the honest customers of the insurance company pay for that fraud. If an attorney wins a $10 billion judgement against a company, the company either goes out of business or raises their prices to compensate.
The intellectual dishonest that attorneys sometimes engage in is that they "make companies pay for their mistakes", presumably with the hope they won't happen again. When it's insurance companies that pay the judgement and regular people that pay for any insurance premium increases, citing this as a deterrent to negligent behavior is unfortunately just not true.
This type of thing makes me a little sick. If you follow the money trail, you'll see that this type of thing only serves to hurt people and society and enrich lawyers at the same time.
1. Companies buy insurance from insurance companies
2. Regular people buy products from company
3. Some people get hurt by company's product
4. Lawyers sue company on behalf of hurt plaintiffs
5. Lawyers win case for plaintiff, Company's insurance company pays $10 gazillion
6. Lawyers for plaintiff take 60% of $10 gazillion
7. Company's insurance rates are raised
8. Company raises prices
9. Regular people pay higher prices to company
So, who pays for such litigation and $100-per-click AdWords? You do.
No, I certainly wouldn't have meant anything quite so inflamatory (no pun intended). What I meant is that we shouldn't exercise any knee-jerk reactions in our diplomatic attempts. We should recognize what this "admission" is; an attempt to get the upper hand in negotiations and to use the threat of WMD to get what you want. Do we want to encourage future states to do the same thing?
Replace "admits" with "brags" and then further replace "brags" with "bluffs" and then it might be a little more true.
This is obviously a serious matter, but we should not believe anything that Kim Jong Il says without adequate proof.
Until the U.S. adopts a "loser pays" court system similar to the UK, these types of exploratory frivolous lawsuits will continue.
Imagine if on the other hand SCO had to pay for IBMs entire legal defense to their frivolous lawsuit after they lost. This lawsuit never would have seen the light of day.
It talks about programming in C and C++ and is therefore insecure.
The itching wasn't so bad, but the burning drove me nuts.
In my opinion, one of China's greatest assets is its lack of current infrastructure. Imagine being able to design roads, dams, bridges, electricity generating plants, etc with 2005 technology without having to support an existing infrastructure.
We're going to hear more stories of bullet trains, monstrous dam projects and now advancements in nuclear energy production.
Good for China - start investing in them now.
With home users, you can have 1,000 customers and make yourself wealthy. You will also be serving 1,000 tyrants with 1,000 problems who if they write you a check for a nickel will think you owe them your first born.
With mid-size companies, you can have 100 customers and make yourself wealthy. You will also be serving 100 tyrants with 100 problems who if they write you a check for $100 will think you owe them your first born.
With large-size companies, you can have 5 customers and make yourself wealthy. You will also be serving 5 people who don't give a rats ass what you do or don't do for them and who if they write you a check for $100,000 will think it's OK if you don't return their call for a few weeks.
This is a slight exaggeration but the basic tenet is true. Don't focus on small fish or you'll be sorry.
I tried this a number of years ago. In fact, there's an CF->IDE interface board that is very inexpensive that I purchased. Turned out that CF was much slower than my hard drive.
Might be interesting to try it again with today's professional flash memory, but with readily available CF memory from about 3 years ago, I was able to install a Windows OS on it but it was slower than my hard drive.
If you really want something like this, there are memory drives that use actual battery-backed up RAM (take your pick of varities) that are as you would expect lightning quick. Last I checked though Bitmicro's Site, they were very expensive.
The first 10% share of the browser market is easy. To get any more than that will be very difficult. Difficulty further enhanced by actions Microsoft may take.
No need to read article now.
GoogleMaps + AdSense + Google Local = Massive profits for Google and a fantastic customer experience.
I knew the folks at Google were smart, but...
The comments of "Wow! That's hilariously dumb" are starting to come in already. Dell is not stupid. Keep an open mind to the fact that something that is counter-intuitive might still be the best way to do something.
In this case, Dell is taking advantage of an inefficiency in the marketplace. Specifically that customers are honestly identifying themselves and they're offering the highest price they feel that particular type of customer will pay. Of course, this starts to break down when customer knowledge makes the marketplace more efficient, but the average person is not a Slashdot denizen or FatWallet (or similar site) checker.
My job duties sound similar to the story poster... My job description is "Penetration Preventer". My business card title just says, "Cockblocker".
I'm very against the name Schmoo. There's just no way to efficiently respond to them dismissively. For instance:
"Slashdot, Schmashdot."
"Schmoo, Schmoo"
Just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Serves those Internet Explorer users right! They should immediately switch to ... uh, wait. Nevermind.
The Economist is a weekly magazine with hundreds of pages of world news. I had a subscription for a couple years before I realized I just could not keep up reading it. Before I stopped subscribing I even tried skipping over those things that held little interest for me. I found it far better to let other people find the interesting things (like this article) and have them eventually posted on Slashdot where I could then read them.
It's a very interesting magazine though if you can find the time to commit to it.
NPR had a recent story on podcasting. They interviewed a guy that would record his commute to work every day and then put it on a web site so that people could then listen to his musings on their IPods. Scintillating.
Before you get all excited about having EBay offering all this great customer service, realize that it comes at a cost. A cost that will be passed on to you - the people that use EBay, both buyers and sellers.